“Do you know,” she went on, “I think it is because you have been kind and good to him—just as you are kind and good to every one. His life is lonely; he is an outcast, almost; no one cares for him, and he appreciates your goodness.”
Pity was the utmost feeling she could produce for Wade Powell out of her kindly heart. But Marley, though he could accept her homage to the full without embarrassment, could not acquiesce to this length, and he laughed at her.
“Nonsense, Lavinia,” he said. “You have the thing all topsy-turvy. It is Wade Powell who has been kind to me; it is he and not I who is good to every one. He has a heart brimful of the milk of human kindness. You have no idea, and no one has, of the good he does in a thousand little ways. He tries to hide it all; he acts as if he were ashamed of it, but there are hundreds of people in Macochee who worship him, and would be ready to die for him, if it would help him any. Don’t think he has no friends! He has them by the score—of course, they are all poor; I reckon that’s why they are generally unknown.”
“But isn’t he cruel?”
Marley’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“I mean,” Lavinia said correctively, “isn’t he kind of sarcastic?”
“Well,” Marley admitted, “he is that at times. I think he tries to hide his better qualities; I think he tries to cloak his finer nature with a rough garb. Perhaps it is because he is really so sensitive. But he is, to my mind, a truly great man. He is a sort of tribune of the people.”
“But, Glenn, what about his drinking?”
“Well, that’s the trouble,” Marley said, shaking his head. “If he had let liquor alone he’d have been away up.”
Lavinia was silent a moment, her brow was knit in little wrinkles.